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Benefits Case Study

Brolin Corporation - GDO Benefits Case Study


Problem: CB Richard Ellis, a commercial real estate service company, assigned Brolin the task of developing a standard Property Listings database for their 60+ Brokerage offices located throughout the US. Each office needed to own and manage their data independently of the other offices. With budgets, data volume, and availability of IT staff varying significantly from office to office, they needed a flexible solution that could be tailored to the unique requirements of each office.
Solution: Brolin's Generic Database Object, GDO. GDO allows each office to choose a database engine that meets their budget, data volume, and IT staffing requirements. The smaller offices chose the Access MDB which could be loaded on their existing Novel file servers; eliminating the need to purchase and install new equipment; and eliminating the need for IT staff to be onsite. The larger offices chose SQL Server that is better designed to handle the level of data volume and number of concurrent users they have. However using SQL Server meant purchasing and coordinating the installation of dedicated database servers. As it turned out, they could not do this within the time frame that had been set for the initial rollout of the new application. GDO saved the day by allowing them to make the initial rollout to the larger offices with an Access MDB and then switching to SQL Server as it could be made available. This enabled them to quickly rollout the new application in all offices nationwide, meeting their initial target dates for delivery.